Augsburg, Zurich, and the Transfer of Preachers during the Schmalkaldic War

2009 ◽  
Vol 42 (4) ◽  
pp. 595-619
Author(s):  
Christopher W. Close
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
Danube River ◽  
Charles V ◽  
City Councils ◽  
God's Word ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
War Effort ◽  
Political Objective

In summer 1546, armed conflict erupted in the Holy Roman Empire. The war pitted the Catholic Emperor Charles V against the Schmalkaldic League, an alliance of Protestant imperial estates led by Landgrave Philip of Hesse and Prince-Elector John Frederick of Saxony. While the conflict's most famous and final battle took place in Thuringia at Mühlberg, the Schmalkaldic War's first military action occurred in southern Germany in the Danube River basin. This area housed numerous evangelical imperial cities, several of which sat south of the Danube in eastern Swabia. When hostilities began in July 1546, magistrates throughout the region ordered their forces to occupy the local countryside. With their soldiers came the Reformation, as city councils sent preachers to reform the seized parishes. For councilors in Augsburg, Ulm, and elsewhere, evangelization complemented the general war effort, since true believers must “first and foremost consider God's word and honor … and let God's word be preached. … Such a thing should not be delayed until after the war, for if one undertakes the Christian work of improving the corrupted churches of these poor subjects now, God will grant us victory more quickly and allow the newly won Christians to remain with us.” Closely tied to the religious goals of this wartime program of reform, therefore, was the concrete political objective of spreading urban jurisdiction to areas formerly controlled by Catholic lords.

The Reformation and the Establishment of Lutheranism in the Holy Roman Empire

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joachim Whaley
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
General Population ◽  
Martin Luther ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
The Political ◽  
Charles V ◽  
15Th Century ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Political Structures ◽  
The Church

Martin Luther was a subject of the Elector of Saxony in the Holy Roman Empire. His emergence as a reformer was made possible by the sponsorship he received in Wittenberg. He owed his survival to the protection afforded him by the Elector when Emperor Charles V outlawed him and ordered that the papal ban of excommunication be enforced in the empire. The audience to which Luther appealed was the general population of German Christians, both lay and ecclesiastical, who wanted a reform of the church and the reduction of the pope’s influence over it. That his appeal resonated so widely and so profoundly had much to do with a combination of crises that had developed in the empire from the 15th century. That his reform proposals resulted in the formation of a new church owed everything to the political structures of the empire. These facilitated the suppression of radical challenges to Luther’s position. They also thwarted every effort Charles V made over several decades to ensure that the empire remained Catholic. Lutheranism became entwined with the idea of German liberty; as a result, its survival was secured in the constitution of the empire, first in 1555 and then in 1648.

scholarly journals Printing, Propaganda, and Public Opinion in the Age of Martin Luther

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Bagchi
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
New Technology ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
Communication Process ◽  
Low Literacy ◽  
God's Word ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Historical Literacy ◽  
The Impact

Luther had a notoriously ambivalent attitude towards what was still the new technology of the printing press. He could both praise it as God’s highest act of grace for the proclamation of God’s Word, and condemn it for its unprecedented ability to mangle the same beyond recognition. That ambivalence seems to be reflected in the judgment of modern scholarship. Some have characterized the Reformation as a paradigmatic event in the history of mass communications (a Medien- or Kommunikationsereignis), while others have poured scorn on any reductionist attempt to attribute a complex movement to a technological advance and to posit in effect a doctrine of “Justification by Print Alone.” The evidence in favor of some sort of correlation between the use of printing and the success of the Reformation in Germany and Switzerland is certainly formidable. Thousands of German Reformation pamphlets (Flugschriften) survive to this day in research libraries and other collections (with Luther’s own works predominant among them), suggesting that the Holy Roman Empire was once awash with millions of affordable little tracts in the vernacular. Contemporary opponents of the Reformation lamented the potency of cheap print for propaganda and even for agitation among “the people,” and did their best either to beat the evangelical writers through legislation or else to join them by launching their own literary campaigns. But, ubiquitous as the Reformation Flugschrift was for a comparatively short time, the long-term impact of printing on Luther’s Reformation was even more impressive, above all in the production and dissemination of Bibles and partial Bibles that used Luther’s German translation. The message of the Lutheran Reformation, with its emphasis on the proclamation of God’s Word to all, seemed to coincide perfectly with the emergence of a new medium that could, for the first time, transmit that Word to all. Against this correlation must be set the very low literacy rate in the Holy Roman Empire in the early 16th century, which on some estimates ranged between only 5 and 10 percent. of the entire population. Even taking into account the fact that historical literacy rates are notoriously difficult to estimate, the impact of printing on the majority must have been negligible. This fact has led historians to develop more nuanced ways of understanding the early-modern communication process than simply imagining a reader sitting in front of a text. One is to recognize the “hybridity” of many publications—a pamphlet might contain labeled illustrations, or be capable of being read out aloud as a sermon, or of being sung. Luther himself published many successful hybrid works of this kind. Another is the notion of the “two-stage communication process,” by which propagandists or advertisers direct their message principally to influential, literate, opinion-formers who cascade the new ideas down. Clearly much work remains to be done in understanding how Luther’s propaganda and public opinion interacted. The fact that our present generations are living through a series of equally transformative and disruptive communications revolutions will no doubt inspire new questions as well as new insights.

Purity and Pollution in Protestant Ritual Ethics

2017 ◽  
Vol 86 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-62
Author(s):  
Klaus C. Yoder
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
Council Of Trent ◽  
Negative Effects ◽  
Intellectual Activity ◽  
Moral Thought ◽  
Charles V ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Body And Soul ◽  
The Church

Purification of the Church is frequently invoked to narrate Protestant justifications for the break from Rome during the Reformation. It also functions to link the Reformation to a process of modern disenchantment. However, little attention has been paid to the rhetoric of pollution and precisely how the reformers articulated the dangers of polluted ritual. The historical location of the sources examined here is the middle decades of the 16th century when Protestants were dealing with political setbacks to the Reformation cause in the Holy Roman Empire, particularly the imposition of the Augsburg Interim by Charles V. This law was designed to find some middle ground between Catholics and Protestants until the schism would be settled at the Council of Trent. However, the debates about whether certain ceremonies, supposedly non-binding with respect to doctrinal commitments, could be used for politically expedient purposes, pushed Protestant thinkers to reassess the power and dangers of liturgical practices and paraphernalia. This article interprets the discourse of pollution in Protestant controversies about compromise in ritual matters by treating the responses of two theologians writing against the Interim from different parts of Germany: Joachim Westphal and Wolfgang Musculus. By laying out the causes of ritual pollution and its negative effects upon body and soul according to individuals who worked for reform in both their intellectual activity as well as their pastoral service, this article demonstrates the importance of ritual matters for Protestant moral thought.

A Magnificent Faith

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bridget Heal
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Visual Arts ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
Religious Art ◽  
God's Word ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The Rich ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Hearts And Minds

This book explains how and why Lutheranism—a confession that insisted upon the pre-eminence of God’s Word—became a visually magnificent faith, a faith whose adherents sought to captivate Christians’ hearts and minds through seeing as well as through hearing. Although Protestantism is no longer understood as an exclusively word-based religion, the paradigm of evangelical ambivalence towards images retains its power. This is the first study to offer an account of the Reformation origins and subsequent flourishing of the Lutheran baroque, of the rich visual culture that developed in parts of the Holy Roman Empire during the later seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The book opens with a discussion of the legacy of the Wittenberg Reformation. Three sections then focus on the confessional, devotional and magnificent image, exploring turning points in Lutherans’ attitudes towards religious art. Drawing on a wide variety of archival, printed and visual sources from two of the Empire’s most important Protestant territories—Saxony, the heartland of the Reformation, and Brandenburg—the book shows the extent to which Lutheran culture was shaped by territorial divisions. It traces the development of a theologically grounded aesthetic, and argues that images became become prominent vehicles for the articulation of Lutheran identity not only amongst theologians but also amongst laymen and women. By examining the role of images in the Lutheran tradition as it developed over the course of two centuries, A Magnificent Faith offers a new understanding of the relationship between Protestantism and the visual arts.

The German Reformed Congregation and its Province of Lower Germany

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Christman
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Martin Luther ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
Close Analysis ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Observant Movement

To fully appreciate the events leading to the executions of Vos and van den Esschen, it is critical to understand the establishment, structure, and growth of the German Reformed Congregation of Augustinians (Observants) in the Holy Roman Empire during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. In particular, close analysis of the Congregation’s expansion into Lower Germany in the 1510s, a result of encouragement by its leader, Johann von Staupitz, reveals a clear set of tactics at work. An awareness of this strategy establishes the foundation for one argument of this monograph: that having learned how the objectives of the Observant movement could be promoted and disseminated, Martin Luther and his colleagues repurposed these methods in the service of the Reformation.

Der Weg zur Entscheidung: Verfahren oder Verhandlung?

2020 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 371-414
Author(s):  
Richard Lüdicke
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
General Model ◽  
Decision Procedure ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
To Come ◽  
Stage Play ◽  
Made In

How to Come up for a Decision: Procedure or Negotiation? The Disputations in Cities in the 1520s The disputations held in imperial cities of the Holy Roman Empire during the 1520 s, facing the turmoils caused by the reformation, served – like a stage play – to showcase and communicate the decision to implement Reformation that had already been made in advance. Usually, this is the judgement on the so called “Religionsgespräche”. Although this view shows up even in contemporary statements, the article argues, that a differentiated analysis of the various actors, their interests and possibilities to influence the events opens up a clearer perspective on what happened and why it happened. Using the sociological distinction of procedure and negotiation, this article shows, that the disputation had to keep the balance between reglemented procedure and more liberal negotiation to produce an accepted and also binding result for their community. Examples from the disputations of Zürich (1523), Kaufbeuren, Memmingen, Nürnberg (1525) and Bern (1528) allow this article to illustrate different ways of how this balancing on a razor’s edge could be done. The conclusion develops a general model of how the cities used disputations to try to deal with the religious turmoil while facing stiff opposition from local clerics and scholars, the papal church and the emperor.

On the rise and Decline of the Monarchical Principle: Constitutional Vicissitudes in Spain and Germany

2010 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 268-292
Author(s):  
Lucas Prakke
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
State Formation ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Charles V ◽  
War Of Independence ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Ideas ◽  
Nation State Formation ◽  
Constitutional Monarchy

Nation-state formation – Holy Roman Empire – Dissolution and realignment – Spain, fragmented – Reconquista – Charles V – Wars of succession – Centralisation under house of Bourbon – Napoleon – Spanish war of independence – History of the Cortes – Constitution of Cádiz – Weakness of Spanish Constitutionalism – German Confederation – Monarchical principle in Vienna Final Act – Old and new ideas of sovereignty – Metternich and fear of revolution – March revolution – Bismarckian empire as constitutional monarchy – Degeneration of the Reich – Exit the Kings – Enter Juan Carlos

Monasticism in Early Modern Germany

2020 ◽  
pp. 461-470
Author(s):  
Edeltraud Klueting
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
Left Bank ◽  
Modern Germany ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
German Speaking ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Right

The chapter addresses the history of monasticism in the German-speaking territories of the Holy Roman Empire from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries. Whether the Reformation movement unleashed by Martin Luther represented a continuation of late medieval monastic reforms or, rather, an abrupt departure from them, is a contentious issue. In the Catholic parts of Germany, after the Council of Trent, monasteries became significant agents in the renewal of the Church, especially in the areas of education and social and charitable activity. On the other hand, the Enlightenment, with its narrow conception of utility, called into question the very basis of monastic life, and hence the right of monasteries to exist. The fallout of the French Revolution and the French occupation of the left bank of the Rhine led to a great wave of monastic dissolutions. It was only under the influence of German Romanticism that monasticism experienced another revival.

Renaissances and Reformations

Why History? ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 105-153
Author(s):  
Donald Bloxham
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
General Nature ◽  
Ecclesiastical History ◽  
Critical Methodology ◽  
Religious Conflicts ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Historical Contextualization ◽  
Renaissance Italy

The chapter begins with History’s place in Renaissance Italy. Then it shows how the historiographies of various states were influenced by tendencies in Italian humanism, as well as by the Reformation. France is accorded special attention, then more briefly England and parts of the Holy Roman Empire. Then the chapter addresses the historiographical battles that corresponded to the religious conflicts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. These were battles of ecclesiastical History, centring on ancient sources. The polemical nature of some of the disagreements reinforced existing scepticism about the reliability of historical knowledge. Yet an increasingly bipartisan critical methodology developed, based on a combination of humanist philology and new palaeographical techniques, with established religious hermeneutics playing their part. Here the dictates of self-serving confessional History as Identity sometimes stood in tension with the demands of a proceduralist History as Methodology even as all sides agreed on the importance of History as Communion. The chapter concludes by addressing a ‘scientific’ seventeenth century for whose dominant intellectual figures historical enquiry supposedly had little use. Like previous chapters, this one addresses conceptual concerns of a general nature as they arise. Different sorts of contextualization are addressed, along with their implications for thinking about the past. Particular consideration is given to how a heightened attention to historical contextualization could be reconciled with ongoing demands for the relevance of History as Lesson for the present. Topical reading was one established solution, but another was resurrected with the ancient doctrine of similitudo temporum.

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